Post-War Problems

AP/HIST1010
Course Director: Dr Jennifer Stephen
 Agenda
1. The Great Influenza Pandemic

2. Commemorating the war: Ordinary people and National

projects

3. The Jazz Age & Modernism

 Sources
• Alfred Crosby, Epidemic and Peace

• Mark Humphries, The Last Plague:

Spanish Influenza and the Politics of
Public Health in Canada
Influenza in Kansas
 The “Spanish Flu”
… is not really Spanish at all.
 One Physician’s account
“It is simply a struggle for air until they
suffocate.”

Cyanosis: the circulation of oxygen-deficient

blood
`
Ontario Spanish Flu Deaths
Some Death Counts (estimates)

• US 550,000
• Europe 2 or 2.5 million people.
• India Possibly 20 million people.
Deaths from Influenza
Social Impact
 How do you move on after the
events of 1914-1919?
• Quick Video on shellshock:

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=cc7ehb8agWY

• How did people recover?

 Coming to Terms with the War
• Personal vs. National Memorials/testimonies

War graves in Belgium

 Canadian Commemorations
Vimy Ridge
 Vimy Ridge:
Remembering a Battle
Unveiling the Memorial
Sculptures from the Vimy Site

Honouring the wall of defence

Mother Canada Mourning her Dead

Veterans
 How did veterans cope?
• Suicide
• Poverty
• Institutionalization in asylums
• Others tried to resume private lives, often
suffered depression, physical pain
 Paul Valéry on the war:
“and now we see that the abyss of history is
deep enough to bury all the world. We feel
that a civilization is as fragile as a life.”
 German Women Voting, 1919

Source: http://www.facinghistorycampus.org/Campus/weimar.nsf/
 “Flappers”
• Women’s roles
changing
• Symbol of modern
liberation?
 Coco Chanel’s Fashion
Revolution
• Fashions for a new age
 Features of
1920s
• Personal
deprivations but a
time of artistic
flowering
• Automobiles grow
in popularity
• Electric lighting
enables a new
nightlife
Berlin Cabaret and Night Life
Josephine Baker
 New Dances!
• Charleston, Two-Step, “Animal Dances”
• See the youtube videos such as:

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=jTR6xBeC2xA
 Bauhaus:
Walter Gropius’ 1925
“International Style”
 The Futurists:
Fiat Lingotto Car Factory, 1916-26
 REVOLUTIONS of the MIND
Not just about politics! The 1920s saw a
revolution in culture. For example:
•MUSIC
•FASHION
•LITERATURE
•DANCE
•ARCHITECTURE
 Coming soon…. Germany’s
1920s
• Modern vs. traditional
• Economic Disasters
• A Moment of Stability
• Radical communism
• Rise of Nazism

• …. We will start looking at this in the next

lecture, entitled “THE WEIMAR REPUBLIC